Uneven Terrain

José Guadalupe Posada (1851 to 1913), "Calaveras Riding Bicycles", depicts belligerent reporters at Mexican velodrome races, engraving print, circa 1900

When terrain gets bumpy or steep, input seems unduly rapid and unexpectedly grumpy. Suddenly under attack, you must react quickly or suffer misery. With an uncertain forecast, neither know what to ignore anymore, nor what well founded strategies will last. Likewise, hard to keep up with boatloads of bicycling references from all over during a bona fide bike boom. Haven’t been able to post since February because preoccupied by a massive bicycling research project.

What do Arnold “Terminator” Schwarzenegger, Ashton “Dude” Kutcher, Bill “Deadhead” Walton, Brad “Achilles” Pitt, Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman, George “Ocean” Clooney, Jennifer “Friends” Aniston, Jennifer “Selena” Lopez, Matt “Bourne” Damon, and Russel “Maximus” Crowe have in common? Off, and sometimes on, camera they’re all avid bicyclists and genuine characters, along with scores of others mentioned in a magazine article, including Joe POTUS Biden. No surprise, a billion humans prefer bikes to gas guzzling cars for at least some trips; why shouldn’t celebrities? Brains of bicyclists are bathed in neurotransmitters and oxygen, so operate more effectively; distant destinations and insurmountable obstacles teach them empathy, humility and patience.

“High gas prices affect so many aspects of life, like, from getting to work, to childcare, to, you know, all your friends who bike becoming even more smug about it.” - Trevor Noah, Nov., 2021

Jefferson Airplane, Fat Angel, Bless Its Pointed Little Head, RCA Victor, 1968 - 
“He will bring happiness in a pipe. He’ll ride away on his silver bike. And apart from that he’ll be so kind in consenting to blow you mind. Fly Translove Airways, get you there on time.”  Live jam at NYC’s Filmore East is an excellent cover of Donovan Leitch’s song, who in 1966 mentions same silver bicycle on Ferris Wheel from album Sunshine Superman.

Always tried to fairly evaluate motile methods by carbon footprint versus perceived convenience. Autonomous private passenger cars are easy to pilot and carry cargo aplenty. But escalating costs for fuel, failing emission systems from contaminated gas and converter thefts, and mounting environmental damage make them world’s worst transportation choice, diametrically opposed to just walking, which impacts nature the least and improves participant the most. Bicycling is more efficient than jogging, but requires employing some amount of energy for manufacturing and shipping. Busses, subways and trains (often electric) move multitudes with much lower emissions per capita than diesel and gasoline cars. Container ships move merchandise more efficiently than planes. Yet people prefer to drive themselves to airports and fly on business and holiday trips irrespective of high costs and intolerable hardships. Unwanted consequences and utter chaos always accompany resource wastes. Devil-may-care consumers choose whatever’s available, while callous capitalists make sure their merchandise fills bills and forces losses on those they oppress.

“Civilians lay dead in the middle of the street. Others lay by the side of the road, next to or underneath their bicycles.” - New York Times, April 6th, 2022, regarding Russian troop withdrawal from siege of Kyiv, Ukraine, and unequivocal evidence of war atrocities

If your worst grievances are having to endure petty inconveniences, prices hikes, and wise advice you don’t want to hear, you’re blessed beyond condolences versus tragedies so many others must bear. To a bore on Bloor, bicyclists know what you are, rude to the core, something all those as deplorable as you obviously ignore. Labann hardly notices despicable motorists anymore. What used to be unforgivable pales against heinous acts and naked aggression by a power lusty, territory mad bully. Unlike invaders driving thirsty tanks, Bucha’s bicyclists managed to get around town until Russian butchers cut them down. It’s another Chinese Tibet sangha-cide or Spanish Guernica genocide guaranteed by dirty gas and oil deals. Later, a captured Russian soldier pleaded guilty to killing bicyclists, probably expecting mercy, as usual for whoever mistreats those who are most vulnerable on streets. In stark contrast, Russia has been convicting and executing foreigners suspected of helping Ukraine’s army, but stupid Americans never much cared what happened in other countries, not realizing tyranny irrevocably spreads, resembles pandemics or tsunamis that massacre millions, and winds up in own backyard.

Blame!? Murderers who pulled triggers didn’t take matter in own hand, but followed orders sent down a chain of command. Devious dictators build for themselves a bubble of deniability to further despicable rackets. They seem either too powerful or too removed to be convicted or even indicted, even though it’s obvious they ordered atrocities. There’s no guilt or shame in choosing a bicycle over a car.

Oppositional conservatives and reactionary dragons are all about blame, chastity, dominance, fraud, greed, guns, impotency, hoarding, patriarchy, privilege, slavery, and such stuff that preoccupies the guilty minds of twisted villains. Antebellum good old plantation days are what they mean when they demand Make America Great Again, because USA already leads world in all measures that matter, why foreigners fight to breach borders on their flight from barbarous tyranny. Conversely, diggers, fairies, hairies, hippies, huggers and yippies were proponents of free love without gender biases, and freegan economics after generations of compliance without rewards. Chemical haze notwithstanding, Jerry Garcia was their gentle conscience, reasonable voice, and shamanistic statesman. Counterculture opposed crooked institutions with consumer boycotts and nonviolent protests. Extremist insurrections, intolerant hatred, knee-jerk brutality, and slaughter of innocents  left majority met speaks volumes about far right’s cultural sellout, delusional threats, and false expectations.

Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, What’ll You Raise?, Go To Heaven, 1979 - “Just rolled in from the golden state, a dusty spoke on the wheel of fate... What will you raise to stay in the game? I follow the breeze, the quick autumn leaves. Who can deliver us all? Is there a reaping, or any safekeeping? If not, how far can we fall?”

“We were grappling over bike racks trying to hold the line... It had become a war zone.” - Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, January 6th Congressional Committee Presentation, June 9th, 2022

Commentators don’t seem to comprehend why so many American artists are preoccupied with what it means to be an American, when it’s painfully simple: It’s a nation of chaotic diversity, intentional obfuscation, and wonderful amalgamation, so perpetually amusing, which annoys conservatives no end. One size will never fit all, so quit demanding that everyone conform to some narrow minded values. People elsewhere view America as a reality show with outrageous scenarios. Age and experiences make one bitter, demented, hopeless, jaded, reckless, yet sometimes wiser.

How consequent and pivotal bicycling scenes are to a film’s plot can be hard to ascribe. Just being out and vulnerable among strangers raises bicyclists from low to medium risk, somewhere between stay-at-home fuddy-duddies and streetwalking hustlers. Movies reflect these truths through a glass darkly.

Nature documentary A Survey of Open Spaces (Peat Duggins, dir., 2013) follows urban bicyclists Chris Comfort and Michaela Duggins 4,000 miles around America’s last wild places, where they dodge grizzly bears and get sunburnt. Film dispels notion of impossibility that so often accompanies opinions on bicycle touring. These days you can die attending classes, congregating at churches, going shopping, or simply joyriding; you might be safer pedaling amidst apex predators.

Based on actual events, The Ride (Alex Ranarivelo, dir., 2018) beholds John (Shane Graham), after an abusive upbringing, come of age as a BMX champion with the help of adoptive interracial parents Eldridge (Christopher Brian “Ludacris” Bridges) and Marianna (Sasha Alexander) Buultjens. With a name including velo, wonder why this French director, well known for sports dramas, has no other cycling titles to date.

Both Jules (Hunter Schafer) and Rue (Zendaya) ride bicycles and take drugs to get to Euphoria (Augustine Frizzell, dir., 2019, Season 1, Episode 1). Both are into self harm in different ways. Rue won’t get high then go for rides due to several past crashes. Jules chucks a finger to an abusive football star pickup driver, who then runs her off the road into a bruising collision on a suburban lawn.

Bikes of Wrath (Cameron Ford, Charlie Turnbull, dirs., 2019) chronicles adventure of five Australians who by bicycle cover same route from Oklahoma to California as characters in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, and explore lesser known localities.

Nobel laureate studded documentary Life on Wheels - Transportation For a New Urban Center (David Hodge, dir., 2020) exposes automotive paradigm for its annual/fatal/global 1.3 million crashes and unnecessary holocaust in the name of greed. It recommends cities be revamped to accommodate bicycling and walking, as they once did, though doesn’t solve obvious factors, namely tripled population since good old days.

Oscar winning Canadian composer Howard Shore produced Bicycling, for Holocaust film The Song of Names (François Girard, dir., 2020), in which an orphaned violinist taken in by an English family bikes and bonds with their son, then disappears just before a recital. Later boys, now middle aged men, bitter sweetly reconnect. Neocon legislators want to outlaw mentions in history classes of genocide, racism, slavery and such things of which they’ve been guilty and want to resume without remorse.

Margaret (Kathryn Newton) and Mark (Kyle Allen), both stuck in a time loop reliving the same day, find each other and survey The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (Ian Samuels, dir., 2021). Growing unafraid of consequences, Mark rides his bicycle while taking serious risks. Margaret steals a car trying to teach herself to drive, though not well enough to avoid crashing into a rack full of bicycles. In aftermath of pandemic, time seems to have stopped for many of those grieving lost loved ones or working from home in isolation. For those unemployed, time’s inexorable passage leads to concomitant foreclosures and dire consequences.

In biopic set a century earlier The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (Will Sharpe, dir., 2021), penniless governess Emily Richardson (Clair Foy) marries ne’er-do-well title gentlemen (Benedict Cumberbatch) and urges him to pursue his talent for drawing and painting cats. His hobby illustrations become wildly popular, but Louis, with no head for business, gives them away, though he bicycles to judge cat shows and get appointed president of Britain’s Cat Society. His real passion is studying effects of electricity, which he legitimately perceives in his feline friends, a neurological insight of which Victorian Englanders had yet no idea. Labann relates to twin themes of contagion grief and obsession relief, neither of which often result in fan adoration or productive application of one’s belief.

Throughout a 15 second Legal Zoom spot (October, 2021) a diligent local bike shop owner wrenches alone before opening for business.

Home2Home (Dennis Kailing, dir., 2022) narrates story, condensed into just under 2 hours, of 24-year-old German Kalling who bicycles 27,000 miles through 41 countries on 6 continents to circumnavigate planet in 761 days. On his first bike journey ever, he asks,”What makes you happy?”, and heads east. Answers come in natural, profound, simple, small experiences on a living planet.

The Mojo Manifesto: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon (Matt Eskey, dir., 2022), featuring Eric Ambel, Jim Dickinson, John Doe, Kinky Friedman (SchwinnTwenty-four song), and Winona Ryder, takes a bicycle trip across the country with young Neill Kirby McMillan, Jr. After befriending enigmatic Skid Roper, Neill finds mainstream success but makes a decision that could jeopardize his career.

Amazon TV series Mixte: Voltaire High, set in 1963 small town France, tackles teens coming of age after local lyceum decides to go co-ed during emergence of feminism and sexual revolution. True to its name and nation, unisex frames abound in every Saint-Jean-d’Angély outdoor scene, whether mopeds or utility bikes. Class beauty Annick Sabiani (Lula Cotton-Frapier) nearly gets expelled when she’s late after a stalker steals Solex that she uses to quarter the hour it takes to walk across town. A rich classmate offers her a lifeline by giving her his sister’s unused bike.

Final scene of documentary We Feed People (Ron Howard, dir., 2022), according to its Oscar winning director, covers a 10-year-old bicyclist who spontaneously volunteers for award winning chef José Andrés and nonprofit World Central Kitchen’s mission to provide the baseline dignity of wholesome meals during disasters, akin to Hog Farm and Wavy Gravy, no? Youth leads humanitarians around devastated city to homes of locals going hungry.

Comedian Seth Myers took a Closer Look at conservative leaders, "'Torturing living things gives me joy,' ...the most honest articulation of [Trump’s] belief that if you can’t empower or enrich him personally he doesn’t care about you... The only way [GOP] can get away with this stuff is because we have an ass-backwards electoral college system that lets Republican vampires write off anyone who doesn’t live in one of a dozen swing states. If we had a national popular vote, Trump and GOP would have to campaign in places like Portland or New York City; I’d personally love to see him try to pander to Portlanders by growing a mustache and riding a penny-farthing."

Recent Greenlight spot has kid earn own money to save for a bike, then ring bell on Wall Street as an IPO tycoon.

New Amazon series Troppo (Jocelyn Moorhouse, dir., 2022, Season 1, Episode 1) set in crocodile infested tropical Queensland, Australia has bicycling private investigator and tatoo artist Amanda Pharrell (Nicole Chamoun) hiring disgraced ex-detective Ted Conkaffey (Thomas Jane) to help her find a missing Korean tech pioneer. Amanda takes her e-bike right into her studio rather than risk damage from reprisals by Crimson Lake villagers, all of whom seem to despise her. Ted profiles her riding and remarks correctly that she spent time in prison. Labann often pondered whether those in the prison he commuted past daily for years might long to be free to ride like he, maybe behave better to pedal as a released parolee.

Primatologist Mireya Mayor, accompanied by researcher Ronny Le Blanc, ride quiet e-bikes hoping to gather cryptid proof in Travel Channel’s Expedition Bigfoot (Ronny Rose, dir., Season 3, Episode 10, May 22, 2022). While many summarily dismiss their existence, for no amount of money would Labann ride wooded trails at night where angry Sasquatches have been reported. People go entire lives without ever seeing a bear, deer. elk, fox, moose, mountain lion, or wolf, though Labann saw them all while riding suburban roads.

“Nothing will stay. It all fades in the end. But we saw angels riding bicycles. Oh, what a sight to hold!” Keston Cobblers Clubs, (Angels Riding) Bicycles [Brit folk], Almost Home, Tricolour Records, 2017